


answers we already know

by tieria



Series: stories of hope (we tell after the war) [2]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Entertainment Dueling, Fluff, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-01-22 09:13:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12478236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tieria/pseuds/tieria
Summary: Dennis is back in Academia to help coordinate efforts in Heartland's rebuilding. Grace is lingering, still trying to figure out where she wants to go from here. And Gloria is the same as ever, seemingly unchanged from the days before it all.(One of them is searching, one of them has found it, and one doesn't realize that they should be looking at all. But the answer, as always, comes in a duel.)





	answers we already know

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote dennis/grace friendship one time in a post-114 fic and it's honestly great. please give me all the dennis & grace content or else I'll just end up writing it all myself heh  
> playing around with looser characterizations than usual too, i hope it's okay??

“Ahem!” Grace clears her throat, turns a few nervous circles around the podium. She stops, goes to speak, changes her mind, paces around a few more times. _This is ridiculous_ , she thinks in Gloria’s voice, but doesn’t let it stop her. Instead she calls to mind a strong duelist who fights with more smiles than Grace has ever realized was possible in the training arenas of Academia, the battered streets of Heartland. She takes a deep breath, then tilts up her chin and says to the empty room, “Ladies and Gentlemen!”

It echoes for a moment, hitting hollow against the walls, and Grace frowns. The words hadn’t come out right. They didn’t hold the same sparkle that Yuuya’s had, even facing the brink of defeat. But she’s sure she’s copied his words, his inflection. She’s made no mistake.

“Give it more excitement,” a voice calls down to her, and Grace startles even as it resounds in the empty lecture hall, bouncing energetic off the arched ceiling, “Like _Ladies and Gentlemen! Boys and Girls! Tonight I’d like to welcome you to the show of your lives!”_

Grace frantically scans the empty room, searching the rows for anyone crouching between the seats, trying to pinpoint when they had come in- when she’d turned her back to gather up her voice and her courage, perhaps? Or when she’d been fiddling with the controls to the microphone on the underside of the podium? It’s alarming that she hadn’t noticed. She and Gloria haven’t been back from Heartland for _that_  long, her instincts shouldn’t have dulled _this_ much-

“Come on,” says the voice, “Aren’t you going to try it?

Grace huffs out a steadying breath, calms her stray feelings. The hunt is over; she has enemies no longer. She blinks; she realizes- feeling. So that’s what she’s missing, hm? She tries to remember just how she felt when she’d dueled against Yuuya. When her grim excitement of the fight of the duel had turned into something different, into appreciation for the glitz and the glamor and the joy of dueling not only for herself, but for a smile pulled from the onlookers.

She closes her eyes and lets the nostalgic emotion tug her along, a warmth in her chest and a breath of fresh air in her lungs. Thinking about a bright figure flitting about the technicolor stage, demanding Grace’s attention wherever he’d went- she smiles. She tries again, and that smile never leaves her face. “Ladies and Gentlemen!”

It resounds even without the microphone, bouncing off the walls, popping like bubbles that remind her of the sparkles and smiles from that day. The voice laughs, but it’s not at her, not unkind- it’s caught up in her rhythm. The top of a head pops up from the floor of one of the back rows, tucked away in the far corner of the classroom.

Grace looks up at the red curls framing a vaguely familiar face. _Macfield?_ she thinks, and that pleasant smile, that little half-wave of his just confirms it. He leaps entirely unnecessarily over a row of chairs, then starts down the stairs towards her. She calls to him- “Aren’t you supposed to be in Heartland?”

There aren’t very many students from the former special class still left at Academia- that recently-promoted Shiunin had run off to Standard, Selena and Yuuri had vanished, taken over by those counterparts of theirs, and Macfield had decided to spend time atoning in Heartland and never returned- until now.

His answer comes after a noncommittal hum. “I just came to help out with a few things. I owed someone a favor.”

He stretches a little bit; Grace swears she hears his spine pop. She asks, a little pointed with incredulity- “Were you sleeping in here?”

“They gave my old room away.” He shrugs, not looking particularly wounded. “It was either here or the roof.”

Grace glances out the window- in the early morning, frost has started to settle, dusting the grass below with a powder of white. Grace berates herself, a little- of course there was a reason the heater had already been on when she’d crept in. She changes the subject. “It’s not polite to spy on a lady.”

Dennis shoots her a cold glance- _do you remember_ , it says to her, _what I was doing the entire war?_ Grace smiles in reply, mostly kind, a little cruel. So he does still have some Academia left in him after all.

 _Well_ , Grace thinks, remembering the Xyz kids who had shied away from stew served by her hand and turned their back and fled at the sight of her summons, _don’t we all?_

She continues, “You can make it up to me with a duel.”

Dennis quirks an eyebrow, and she crosses her arms, equally unimpressed. “An entertainment duel. That  _is_ what you do, isn’t it?”

“I just didn’t realize that you were interested,” Dennis replied. “The Tyler Sisters are known for being a little vicious, aren’t they? That’s not usually entertainment material, unless you intend on playing villains.”

Ah, Grace has had enough of the game. She says, blunt- “Sakaki Yuuya.”

Dennis’ loose posture freezes up for a long second before it relaxes again. When he speaks, it’s with the hint of a smile, a memory too recent and too affecting to be called _nostalgic_. “Yeah. He has that effect on people.” A pause, then- “Okay. But don’t expect me to go easy on you just because you’re new!”

Grace scoffs. “I’m new to entertainment, not to dueling.”

As he passes, Grace catches the hint of a smile- and that’s right, he always did like to tease.

“Try to keep up,” he says as they begin the duel, and Grace is soon to find out that he’s not joking. He leaps across the field, almost dancing with his monsters and leaving Grace to chase after him- sometimes quite literally, as she understands what he’s about to do just a second after he throws himself into motion. She’s less used to this than him; that she can admit easily. It just drives her to be that much more tenacious.

At some point, Grace is distracted by the sound of the door sliding open, and she freezes on instinct. Standing at the back of the classroom, hand still on the sliding door is Gloria. She blinks up at them, judging what she sees- that is, Grace and Dennis perched atop the glowing blue platforms of an action field, fingers resting atop the same action card. She clicks her tongue, loud enough that Grace can hear it loud and clear.

“Not this again,” she says, and shuts the door with a slam.

“Wait!” Grace calls after her, leaping down from her platform to land neatly on her feet- _still practiced there, at least-_ then races up the stairs intent on dragging Gloria back into the lecture hall. Her Amazoness monsters bound obediently behind, and Grace likes to think it gives her a little more presence against her outright intimidating sister when she grabs Gloria’s wrist and demands, “Join us.”

“I’m not interested,” Gloria says glancing over her shoulder at Grace. She tries to pull away, but Grace’s grip is ironclad.

“Please.”

Gloria rolls her eyes and says nothing. With another steadying breath, Grace collects her thoughts. She hadn’t wanted to say this half to Gloria’s back, but it’s now or never. She knows this with as much certainty as she knows her way through a duel. Nerves no longer rattle through her, staying her words. “I’ve been thinking,” Grace admits, and it’s the start of a conversation they’ve both known is a long time coming, “I think I want to become an Entertainment Duelist.”

“Good for you.” Gloria’s hand curls into a fist. She doesn’t meet Grace’s eyes when she says the words, just stares forwards into the middle distance of the hall. Grace can’t help but feel hurt- she knows that Gloria can be cold, that she can hold people at a distance both figurative and literal- but even with their greatest differences of opinion, Gloria had never tried to push away her own sister.

“But I still want to duel with _you_ ,” Grace says. It’s not that she can’t do this without her. She has the confidence, the drive to chase down this new opportunity with everything she has- even if it’ll be strange, consistently dueling solo for the first time in her life, she knows that she can do it. It’s just that she doesn’t _want_ to. They’ve been partners since they were children; Grace takes more pride in the strength of their combined strategies than just about anything else.

“Please?” she pleads, the final time, and squeezes Gloria’s wrist. Gloria huffs, but the pinched lines of her face go slack; she unclenches her fist. For the first time this conversation, she turns to face Grace properly.

“Fine,” Gloria says, and the relief Grace feels is sudden and overwhelming. “But I can’t promise I’ll like it.”

“That’s okay,” Grace replies, and means it. The fact that Gloria is giving it a try is all she’s ever wanted. Still with her hand on Gloria’s wrist, she brings them back to the makeshift stage, where Dennis is waiting with action card clasped between two fingers.

Dennis glances between them; Grace sends Gloria an expectant look. Gloria lets out one last, resigned sigh, and flicks her duel disk to life with a robotic _‘intrusion penalty’_ as she draws an opening hand.

“Two against one?” Dennis asks, not looking terribly displeased about it. Trapeze Magician and Force Witch laugh from his side of the field- with that setup, Grace figures, of course he’s not. Well. She’s never been one to shy away from a challenge.

“Go easy on my sister,” Grace says, more than a little mischievous, “she’s a beginner.”

“ _Grace_ ,” Gloria hisses, and this is it. This is what Grace has been waiting for, all this time spent wandering Academia’s halls, wondering what road she needs to pave for herself- this is where it’s been leading, where it has been ever since she first experienced the grey Heartland streets painted bright in the light of a duel unlike that she’d ever seen before.

She laughs, and though Gloria shoots her a confused glance, waiting for her to make a move, she doesn’t stop- this feels right.

“I resume my turn!” she says, and throws her arm forwards, “Amazoness Pet Liger attacks Trapeze Force Witch!”

Across the field Dennis matches her energy as he moves to defend with the action card. Grace leaps to catch another she spots, having fallen in her and Dennis’ earlier rush for the same card- but when she reaches for it, it’s already gone, stolen out from under her fingertips.

“Don’t think you’re so lucky,” Gloria taunts, and cancels the effect of Dennis’ action card with her own. Grace smiles her thanks, though Gloria doesn’t see it except perhaps out of the corner of her eye, completely focused on the duel.

“I set two cards and end my turn,” Grace says, and passes the baton off to Gloria, as easy as it’s always been.

And she knows. More than anything else, this excitement, this bubbling anticipation, this sweet and honest _enjoyment_ \- it’s right. Without a single doubt left to hesitate on, a single thing to hold her back- this is her answer.


End file.
